PhonePe acquires homegrown Indus App Bazaar for Rs 438 crore

Walmart-owned digital payments provider PhonePe has acquired homegrown Android app store Indus App Bazaar for $60 million (roughly Rs 438 crore), reliable industry sources told IANS on Wednesday.

The move, sources said, will strengthen PhonePe’s ‘Switch’ app that aggregates several useful apps at one place.

Both the companies were yet to release an official statement.

PhonePe launched the Switch platform in 2018 and today, its customers can place orders on over 300 apps including Ola, Swiggy, Myntra, IRCTC, Goibibo, RedBus etc. directly from within the PhonePe mobile app.

PhonePe is accepted at over 17.5 million merchant outlets across 500 cities nationally.

Indus OS was founded by IITians, Rakesh Deshmukh, Akash Dongre, and Sudhir Bangarambandi in 2015.

The company is known to make innovative products like Indus App Bazaar which serves over 100 million users.

Available in 13 languages, it houses over 400,000 apps. The core aim of Indus App Bazaar is to democratize the use of mobile applications for the world starting with India with an enhanced app store ecosystem (EASE).

Indus OS has raised nearly $20 million to date.

On the other hand, PhonePe has over 280 million registered users.

PhonePe forayed into financial services in 2017 with the launch of Gold providing users with a safe and convenient option to buy 24-karat gold securely on its platform.